To the Rescue
by FelixSnaps
Summary: Karkat is sent to an alternate timeline by a crack in reality caused by Lord English. Meenah Peixes isn't about to let anything happen to her flush-crush so she does the only obvious thing there is to do: recruit the only non-Megido time hero she knows, Dave Strider, which is how Aqua Punk-Girl, Davecape, and somehow Rufioh Nitram ended up on a quest to save a certain mutant troll.
1. Chapter 1 - Karkat

Karkat Vantas peeked around the corner again and growled to himself in frustration.

_He's still there. Does he seriously not have anything better to do than stand in one spot and stare off into space all day?_

Cronus Ampora was at least as annoying as his dancestor. Well, probably. Eridan had driven Karkat up a wall most of the time—like pretty much everyone else he knew—but he had had his good moments. Well, before he completely flipped his shit and gone on a wand murder rampage.

Karkat's interactions with Ampora Senior, on the other hand, had been limited to flipping him off and yelling "No!" at the top of his lungs while running in the opposite direction as soon as the guy tried to talk to him, so he didn't really know that much about him.

Well, that strategy had worked before, so Karkat steeled himself and walked out from his hiding spot with as much purpose as he could put into his strides. The dead teen barely had a chance to look at Karkat before the mutant troll stuck up both middle fingers at him, still walking. Cronus nonchalantly returned the favor with one hand, the other occupied by a cell phone. He probably decided it wasn't worth bothering Karkat at all today, but fate wasn't about to let the young troll off that easily.

Kankri Vantas seemed to materialize out of nowhere, immediately launching into a lecture about offensive gestures and how they should talk out their problems respectfully like adults.

"Hey, Vwantas-lookalike," Cronus whispered, leaning a little closer to Karkat as Kankri droned on and on.

"No," Karkat whispered back before he could finish the statement, inching away.

"You didn't ewven listen to vwhat I vwas going to say."

"I don't care what you were going to say!"

"I _vwas_ going to ask if you knew how to shut him up. He's your ancestor."

"Oh. Well, if I knew, I wouldn't be here right now, dumbass!"

"Are you two even listening?" Kankri frowned.

"Yes," they said at the same time.

"I can start from the beginning if you—"

"No!" the other two trolls cut him off again.

"I, uh, have to go do this thing, but I'm sure he'll be happy to hear everything you have to say about everything," Karkat assured his ancestor, sticking his thumb out at Cronus, who shot him a death glare.

Kankri opened his overactive mouth again, but at that moment Meenah Peixes rounded the very corner Karkat had been hiding behind, coming to his rescue.

"Hey, Shouty," she grinned, showing off her pointy teeth.

"Hi," Karkat said.

"Hey," Cronus greeted.

"No," she said before he had a chance to go on.

"I didn't ewven ask you anything," the purple-blooded troll frowned.

"Hello, Meenah, we were just talking about—" Kankri began, but Meenah cut him off as well.

"Don't care. Go tell it to Leijon; she's the only one that actually listens to you. Well, not with her ears, but you know what I mean. So, you ready to go, Shouty?"

"Yes," Karkat said emphatically.

"Vwhere are vwe going?" Cronus asked, clearly eager to get away from the talkative troll.

"You can stay right here," Meenah glared at him. "I'm sure Kankri has a lot to say to you. He has a lot to say in general."

"That's true," Karkat's dancestor agreed, "but I don't appreciate you implying that's a negative quality."

"Let's just go," Karkat said. Like pretty much everything else, the ancestors were just so _annoying_.

"So, are you going out on a date or…?" Cronus asked.

"That's none of your business, fish br—ow!" Karkat exclaimed as Meenah hit him in the shin with her trident, giving him a warning look and tipping her head toward Kankri just a little too late.

"I suggest you be more careful with your thoughts, since they can easily become words," Kankri began, launching into another monologue. "You came dangerously close to saying a racist and hurtful seadweller-specific slur—"

"We aren't offended, right Cronus? Now let's go krill some whales already!" Meenah urged.

"Wait, what?" Kankri and Cronus asked at the same time, but Meenah was already leaving and pulling Karkat along with her.

The plan was to hunt some dream whales. That was pretty much it. If anything, Karkat was pretty sure Meenah was making a big deal out of nothing, fussing over arranging a meeting time and trying to be all nonchalant about it at the same time, but it was nice to get away from the meteor, even though he was technically still lying curled in the corner of the lab sleeping like a wiggler.

The problem was that Rose and Kanaya were practically joint at the hip, which was romantic and Karkat was happy—well, as happy as the troll could be—for them, but it also kind of made them lousy company, especially since Rose was pretty much perpetually drunk or hungover these days. Terezi was always out on hate-dates with his ex-moirail and sinking deeper into the downward spiral her life was turning into, and Karkat didn't even know who Gamzee was anymore and hadn't even seen any trace of him in days and days. Everyone else was dead or out of reach except, of course, Strider, but there was only so much quality time Karkat could spend with the prick in one sitting before he started to feel the last of his sanity slipping away. Besides, Dave needed some alone time, too.

Basically, he wished he had time powers and could just speed up the days until the meteor reached its destination, because the journey was boring as hell. He'd asked Dave about it several times, but the other knight insisted he couldn't do anything like that and Karkat knew he didn't like to use his powers anymore for some reason.

They quickly reached the dream bubble ocean, and Karkat retrieved his sickle from his strife specibus, pulling his arm away from Meenah. Sure enough, there were several whales frolicking through the skies on the horizon.

Karkat looked at Meenah, and she looked at him.

"Fuck this shit. Let's do something(fin) else," they said at the same time.

Then, before they could continue the conversation, Karkat realized his vision was darkening, as though someone was turning down the screen brightness on the world. He waved a hand in the air, wondering if he was waking up. Waking up had never been like this before. Neither had changing dream bubbles.

"Hey, Vantas, you okay?" Meenah asked, eyeing him curiously. Her face was becoming obscure, and Karkat was getting worried.

"I… It's getting dark."

"…No it's not," she said, sounding confused.

"What the fuck is going on?" he demanded, starting to get a little freaked out. He almost couldn't see at all now.

"I don't know what you're talking ab—"

Suddenly, everything was dark and silent, and he was falling.


	2. Chapter 2 - Dave

"Hey. Hey, Karkat. Dude, wake up," Dave said, slamming his fist against the door to the laboratory where Karkat usually withdrew to sleep. "Come on, man, I'm bored as hell. Let's do something."

There was no answer.

Dave sighed quietly and pressed down on the handle. "Come on, Karks, you're sleeping way too much. What're you even doing in your dreams? Dating someone? Karkat?"

The troll was gone.

That was weird. This was his brooding and sleeping spot. There was plenty of space to pace as well, and no vents for that creepy juggalo fucker to crawl in through, and Karkat spent a lot of time in here. Dave was pretty sure he would have noticed the troll leave, and maybe he was just being egotistical, but he was also pretty sure Karkat would have gone to find him.

Who was he kidding; of course Karkat would have gone to find him. He was just that cool.

"Hey, Davecape," a friendly and familiar voice sounded from behind him. "Where's your bro?"

Dave calmly turned around, though his heartbeat was just slowing from the shock, cape swishing. "Karkat? I don't know. I was just looking for him. How are you even here?"

Meenah Peixes shrugged, shifting her weight from one leg to the other and crossing her arms. "I don't know. Lord Bad Guy is literally destroying reality—it probubbly has somefin to do with that."

"Still doing the fish pun thing, I see," Dave commented.

"My fish puns are flippin' awesome, shut up."

"I never said they weren't," Dave defended coolly. Truth be told, they could get a little annoying, but he didn't mind them too much.

"Well, do you know where he might be?" she pressed, returning to the original subject.

"You've got nothing better to do than run after that guy all the time?" Dave asked.

"Hey, fuck you! I'm not running after anemoneone," she frowned.

"Just kidding, jegus. It's not like I've got anything else to do either."

She looked around at Karkat's stuff and Dave followed her gaze without really thinking about it. "So are you two dating now or—is that my shirt?" he asked, sight resting on a crumpled red-and-white piece of fabric half-tucked under blanket.

"Is it?" she questioned, ignoring the first inquiry and watching as Dave picked the cloth out of the pile.

"Yeah. That's fucking creepy," he commented, holding it up in front of him to look at the record in the middle.

"Maybe he was running out of cloth to make this nest thing with," Meenah suggested. "Either that, or he's got a crush on you."

"Oh, gog, I hope not," Dave said. "That would be really awkward. I think I'll just toss this out. Not like I need it anymore anyway." He captchalogued the shirt.

"That's true. We god tiers have badass jammies. Well, you knights do. My outfit was stupid. Anywave, enough snooping through his stuff and more looking for the reel Shouty," Meenah ordered.

"So, can you float through walls and shit now?" Dave asked, starting toward the door, cape dramatically billowing behind him. Meenah waved a hand at the nearest lab table, and succeeded in hitting it when her hand failed to go through.

"Apparently not," she shrugged.

"Well, at least you can pick stuff up," Dave pointed out as she followed behind. "Let's see if the girls have seen Karkat."

Kanaya and Rose were exactly where Dave had left them. Rose had a drink in one hand and was listening intently to whatever Kanaya was saying, but the words probably weren't getting through because her expression showed she was vaguely bewildered.

Dave rapped his knuckles against the doorframe and Meenah stopped behind him. "You guys seen Karkat?"

"Is he still asleep?" Kanaya asked, looking up at them. "Oh, hello."

"Hey," Meenah grinned with a small wave.

"Pardon my rudeness, but are you Meenah Peixes, Feferi's ancestor?" Kanaya questioned.

"Yep." She grinned wider.

"How did you get here?" she asked.

"I dunno," Meenah shrugged, folding her arms again.

"Karkat," Dave reminded the rainbow drinker. "Is he here?"

"Nope," Rose said.

"We have not seen him," Kanaya affirmed.

"He's in troububble. Trouble," Rose slurred.

"What?" Dave asked.

"Rose, you are heavily inebriated," Kanaya frowned. "Do you even know what you are saying?"

"'Course I do. I'm the Seer of Light, Kanayam. Kamayan. Kanaya. I seeeee things. Karkatty's in troooouble now. Oh, no, we need to save him! Karkat, nooo!" she cried and put her head down on the table.

"I can't tell if you're serious or just drunk," Dave frowned.

"Rose, we need you to talk to us. Why would you say Karkat is in danger?" Kanaya questioned.

After a lot of coaxing and coffee, they managed to decipher that Karkat had been sent to another reality, probably by one of Lord English's cracks in the space-time continuum, and he was in trouble because the post-scratch ancestor trolls were running amuck in that timeline and the younger Vantas boy was, well, a mutant, and there was only so much time until his true blood color was discovered.

"Well, shit," Meenah said. "I guess we can add Shouty to the list of dead trolls, since there's no wave we'll get to him in time to save him. I'll just go wait for him in a dream bubble I guess."

"I didn't think you were so quick to give up," Dave remarked. "You really just want to let Karks get himself killed?"

"Shell no! You and I are going on a missfin, Shades!"

"We are? I mean, of course I'm coming with you, but why did you automatically pick me?"

"Well, you're friends with Vantas, so you'll want to kelp him, and you're god tier pike me. Also, you're the only non-Megido time hero I know, and I have a feeling we're going to need a time hero who doesn't hate my guts or annoy the shell out of me. Plus, the seer here is completely out of it and Maryam here probubbly needs to keep an eye on her to make shore she doesn't hurt herself or somefin."

"Yeah, and I don't think you should tell Terezi," Dave added, directing the statement at Kanaya. "She's got enough issues right now."

"Who the shell is Terezi?" Meenah asked as Kanaya nodded.

"Doesn't matter," Dave told her. "Let's go." He paused. "How do we go?"

"You are the Knight of Time, she is the Thief of Life," Kanaya thought out loud. "You're visiting our ancestors' lives in a different timeline. Combine your powers, if you can."

The records appeared beneath Dave's fingertips and Meenah's hands began to glow with electric blue light. "Okay, we double high-five on the count of three," Dave instructed. "Hopefully this won't kill us all. Rose, Kan, stand back. One, two, thr—"

"Hey, guys," a new voice interrupted. "What's all this about high fives?"


	3. Chapter 3 - Meenah

"The fuck are you doing here, Nitram?" Meenah asked, the glow of her hands extinguishing, and Dave's time records vanishing back into thin air.

"No idea. One minute I was hanging out in a forest and the next I'm here. Whose memory is this?" the bull-horned troll asked.

"We're not in a dream bubble, moron. This is the reel world, and we're in the middle of somefin very important here."

"Mind filling me in?" the newcomer asked, hovering a few inches off the ground as he fluttered his large orange wings.

"We're sort of on a tight schedule," Dave told him.

"Vantas fell through a crack in reality and we need to bring him back, so back up," Meenah instructed.

"I just saw him talking to Cro, though. Or talking at, more like. I'm Rufioh, by the way," he introduced himself, giving the drunken Rose, impatient Dave, and bewildered Kanaya a smile.

"Not that Vantas, the other one, now let's go before he joins you in the afterlife," Dave pressed.

"Can I come?" Rufioh asked.

"No," Meenah said, raising her glowing hands again. "Come on, What's-His-Cape."

"Aw, why not?" Rufioh questioned.

"You don't even know what we're doing, now stop distracting us!"

"I dunno, MP, if he's a god tier maybe he can help us. What are you the hero of?" Dave asked.

"I'm not a god tier, but I'm the Rogue of Breath," Rufioh informed him. "And I might as well do something constructive with my time, like help out Kankri's dancestor."

"Okay, fine, just come on before we waste anemonemore time!" Meenah snapped.

"Great, so how do we do this?" Rufioh asked.

"I have no fucking clue, dude. We're just winging it," Dave said, then frowned slightly. "No pun intended."

"Whatever, let's just do the flippin' high-five already and if it doesn't work or Nitram gets left behind we'll swim with it," Meenah grumbled, and Dave's records were back, seemingly glued to his hands.

"All right, three, two, one," Dave counted out, and Meenah smashed her palms against his disks.

Red and blue light erupted from the collision, causing everyone in the room to turn away or shield their eyes, and then suddenly it was gone.

"I can't believe that actually worked," Dave said, adjusting his shades and looking around.

Meenah, Dave, and Rufioh were not on the meteor anymore, that much was certain.


	4. Chapter 4 - Karkat

Karkat Vantas had no idea where the hell he was.

When he woke up, he was lying flat on his back in a long, empty, indigo-themed hallway. His neck hurt but he didn't appear to be otherwise injured, thankfully. It was kind of dark, too, and he blinked a few times to make sure it wasn't just his eyes flipping out on him again.

When he had determined it really was dark, he sat up slowly, and then got to his feet, feeling kind of stiff. Was this another dream bubble?

He had a feeling it wasn't. Dream bubble transferring had always been a lot more peaceful and a lot less painful. Plus, he always felt safe in dream bubbles, even when it was part of a bad memory, because he knew it was just a memory, but this place gave him the creeps for reel. Real. Jegus, the fact that he was starting to think in fish puns was more than enough evidence that he needed to stop hanging around seadwellers so much.

Karkat retrieved his sickle from his strife specibus and clutched it in one hand as he started down the hallway. Maybe he could find a window or something to smash through, or just an unlocked door he could use like a normal person.

_Why are there random floor-length curtains on the wall?_ he wondered, pausing to draw one cautiously back to see if it was hiding a window. There was nothing behind it, other than the grey walls, of course.

Suddenly, he became aware of approaching voices and quickly ducked behind the curtain he was clutching, practically holding his breath.

"…by the orders of the Grand Highblood…" was all he could understand from the bit of the conversation he was there for before they passed by completely.

Grand Highblood?

That stuck-up sweaty jackass Equius had always referred to Gamzee as "the highblood", so it was likely whoever they were talking about was in the same blood caste, he reasoned.

Actually, it was probably the post-scratch version of the juggalo's ancestor. Everything seemed to revolve around those assholes these days.

When he had determined they were gone for good, Karkat cautiously peeked out from behind the curtain. There was no one in sight once more, thank gog. He quickly switched his shirt to one that didn't have his symbol on it—if there was even the most remote possibility that he would run into post-scratch ancestors, he didn't want to have the symbol of the Signless stamped on the front of his shirt for the whole world to see.

There were double doors at the end of the hallway, but they were closed tight and Karkat had no way of seeing through them to make sure whatever was on the other side wasn't dangerous. He slowly turned the handle and found it was unlocked. Cracking it open just the slightest bit, he put his eye to the space, squinting against the light that spilled in. Oh, good, it led to the street. Finally, a stroke of luck.

Stepping outside, he looked around at the hive systems and trolls moving through the streets and just kind of stopped to watch for a few moments. He didn't say it out loud even to Kanaya, but he did miss his life on Alternia more than just a little bit. It was tough, sure, and he lived in constant fear of being found out, but at least it wasn't a perpetual mind-fuck like his life now.

Which had somehow landed him back on his planet before it was wiped out.

Although it was very clearly his home planet, Alternia looked kind of different from the way Karkat remembered it, and he reasoned that he was in a time period before he was hatched, which was just fan-freaking-tastic because it meant he could be in any one of thousands of sweeps and blending in until he found a way back was going to be tough, especially since he had be on his guard again. He'd been getting sloppy recently with hiding his blood color, probubbly—fuck, pro_bably_—because there really was no need to anymore.

And now, suddenly, there was. He wasn't sure how he felt about that, but he wasn't about to waste his time with an inner feelings jam about it.

He tried to make a call to Strider on his crab communication device, but it didn't work. It was worth a shot, but he hadn't really expected it to go through.

Someone snaps at him to move out of the way of the door, but he's too distracted to make a fuss about it so he just walks off onto the muddy street, letting the guy go about his business and setting out to take care of his own. He felt so ridiculously conspicuous in his black shirt and grey pants when everyone else seemed to be either too well-dressed or ridiculously poor. Seriously, where was the middle class? Were they all hiding in their hives or something?

Karkat searched the sky with his eyes for any tell-tale rainbow-colored cracks in it, but it was the same as it had ever been. He wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Probably neither—what would he have done if they were there, anyway? Fly up to them and jump through? He wasn't even a freaking god tier. Gog, all his ideas were so stupid.

There had to be some way to get back to the meteor. He had spent almost all of his time on there wishing he wasn't, but now that the wish had actually been granted, he just wanted to go back and mess around with the lab equipment or something instead of wandering around past-Alternia like a clueless moron.

"Hey, watch it!" an adult troll snapped at him, almost knocking Karkat right off his feet in his hurry to push past him.

Karkat just stared after him for a moment. It was so strange to see adult trolls all over the place like this. Was this what it was like for the humans on Earth? It just felt wrong.

He also realized that was the second time he'd zoned out like an idiot. How was he going to get back and how the hell were they supposed to defeat Lord English if he couldn't even focus for a goddamn minute?

Karkat dived out of the way as a group of maybe six or seven soldiers ran down the street, pushing through the crowds. There was a commotion, and people began moving over there to see what was going on. He followed them, pushing through to the front and getting more than a couple glares—which he either returned or ignored—and saw exactly what he expected to see.

Kankri.

Well, his older, post-scratch self. He was preaching his ideals about equality, only this version of his didn't wear a bright red sweater or mention some form of the word "trigger" every other sentence, making him overall way less annoying by about a billion percent. However, he was with someone Karkat hadn't been ready to see quite yet—a carbon copy of Sollux.

Well, an older version of the young psionic. Actually, the Helmsman—who wasn't quite the Helmsman yet, apparently—looked more like Sollux than pre-scratch Mituna. Maybe it was the lack of helmet, body suit, idiotic four-wheel device, and stream of profanities that usually dissolved into not-quite-words. Maybe it was because Sollux was pretty much identical to Mituna anyway, or maybe it was because Karkat had only actually talked to Mituna's ghost once and quickly resolved to never do it again while he interacted with Sollux regularly, at least before his death. Or half-death, or whatever.

Actually, it was probably all of those things at once.

The soldiers finally clawed their way through the ring of trolls, sending people scattering every which way. The Psiioniic and the Sufferer fled as well, quickly vanishing into the woods near the road. It was probably early in the revolution because the soldiers didn't bother to follow, but before Karkat realized what he was doing he was running after them like he was being pulled by a magnet.

Thousands of miles away on the Alternian seas, three not-friends appeared on the deck of a pirate ship.


	5. Chapter 5 - Dave

"Whoa, where are we?" the Rufioh guy asked, hovering a few inches off the ground as the ship tilted under Dave's feet.

"This is _your_ planet," he pointed out. "I think."

"Yeah, this is the place. Are we on Beforus or Alternia, though?" Meenah asked, looking over the rail and into the waves below.

"More importantly, whose ship is this?" Dave asked.

"Mine," a fourth, unfamiliar—at least to the human of the group—voice joined in, and suddenly Dave felt a rapier blade pressed against his throat and a flash of white-hot pain before everything went black.

Apparently it was just for a moment though, because he regained consciousness lying flat on his back on the deck of the ship in time to witness the ancestor trolls' reactions.

"Holy sh-t, Aranea! That was totally unnecessary!" Rufioh exclaimed, seemingly skipping over the vowel in the swear and zipping out of the way of a swing of the same sword. Meenah dived out of the way of the back swing so the three time—universe?—travelers had her in the center of a triangle. Dave sat up, making sure his shades—and head—were still in place.

"What is it? Why won't it die? How do you know my hatch name?" 'Aranea' asked, looking wide-eyed at Dave, who had retrieved Caledscratch from his half-bladekind specibus by the time he was on his feet, her gaze occasionally flickering briefly at the two other trolls.

"Hey, fuck you," Dave frowned slightly, looking over the troll woman clutching the sword that had failed to bring about his death. "Oh, God, another spider troll. How many of you are there? Is this some kind of clown cult but with eights and shit?"

"Look, Serket, it's great to sea ya and all—even though I literally just got talked at by a wave less badass version of you an hour ago—but we gotta go." Meenah paused. "You can fly, right, Davecape?"

"Yeah, of course. Why wouldn't I?" Dave asked.

"Dunno, it's just that ya don't seem to have wings and I wasn't sure if humans got flight with their god tier abilities," she explained.

"I don't see you with any wings," Dave pointed out. "Plus he's got wings and he isn't a god tier."

"They're under my totally awesome shirt," she said. "And Rufioh's just a freak of nature."

"Whoa, watch it Meenah, Kankri might somehow jump into the conversation out of nowhere again and now is not the time to listen to his ranting since Mindfang Aranea is literally about to double-kill us all again!"

He was right, Dave saw, as John's patron troll's post-scratch ancestor was calling her crew over, and they all looked ready to attack and a lot scarier than he was willing to admit. The definition of what qualified as a heroic or fair death was still a little foggy to him and he didn't want to find out the hard way.

He retrieved Caledscratch and leveled it toward them, backing toward the railing and turning to vault himself overboard and rising into the air next to Rufioh.

"Meenah, what are you waiting for?" the other troll asked.

"My wings are under my shirt," she explained. "And it doesn't have wing slits."

"Oh my God, we don't have time for this," Dave said, swooping over to her and grabbing the back collar of the shirt in question, pulling her out of the way of Aranea's sword and overboard.

"Hey!" she squeaked in shock, arms and legs flailing as he held her aloft about a dozen feet off the surface of the waves.

"Stop kicking or I'll drop you," Dave warned. He wasn't sure how strong ghost fabric was anyway, and he didn't want to risk it—

"Shit!"

—ripping.

"Eek!" Meenah fell toward the water and landed with a splash. She stayed under for a few moments—probably to assess the damage before popping up again. There was a small tear in the front of her collar maybe half an inch long, and it had just been the sudden shift in weight that caused Dave to lose his grip on her.

"Hang on, I have an idea," Dave began, but he was interrupted by Rufioh.

"Can we lose these guys first?"

Oh, yeah, the trolls staring wide-eyed at them.

"Wait up," Meenah instructed, ducking under the waves again, so the two boys did. Moments later, she burst out of the water, purple fairy wings fluttering a mile a minute and sending glittering droplets of water flying everywhere. "Great, now my favorite shirt has two giant holes in the back," she complained.

Dave rolled his eyes, though she couldn't see it under his dark shades. "Come on, let's find land."

"So, do we just pick a direction, or what?" Rufioh asked.

"Well, something tells me _they_'re not up for showing us the way," Dave pointed out, nodding his head toward the ship.

"Let's go this way," Meenah suggested, zipping away from the boat before either of the others could protest, so they followed close behind.

A long time—exactly one hour, twenty minutes, and eleven seconds—later, they spotted the land in the distance. Meenah halted, and Dave and Rufioh came to a stop just behind her.

"You need a disguise, uh…" Rufioh trailed off, looking at Dave.

"Davecape," Meenah filled in. The mohawk-haired troll raised his eyebrows.

"Davecape is fine," Dave said, not wanting to argue about it. It was a pretty ironic nickname, anyway, he guessed, and he _did_ have an awesome cape.

"…Davecape," Rufioh finished. "I mean, don't get me wrong, humans are pretty cool and all, but you don't even have any horns."

"Not to mention you're whiter than a ghost," Meenah added. "I would know, since I am one."

"Okay, okay, I get the point. Jegus," Dave muttered. "So what, am I supposed to wear my cape over my head or something?"

"Until we get ya some face paint or somefin," Meenah affirmed.

"Can't we just, like, fly out of sight?" he asked. Cosplaying as a troll wasn't really on his "Top Ten Life Goals" list.

"We'll never find Shouty if we can't sea him either," Meenah pointed out.

"Oh my gog," Dave shook his head slightly in exasperation. "The things I do for the people I platonically hate."

This comment earned him an eye-roll from Meenah and a puzzled look from Rufioh but, neither said anything. As they neared the land, Dave flipped his cape forward so it was draped over his neck and shoulders and doubled over his head. All he saw was dark red and Rufioh had a hand on his shoulder to guide him.

They landed on solid ground—Dave a little too hard, as he couldn't see to judge the speed at which he should hit the dirt. He was led through the streets—at least, he was pretty sure they were streets, since what else could they possibly be?—until they stopped in an alley. Dave grimaced as Rufioh wiped paint onto his face with a piece of cloth.

"You gotta hold still and stop making faces if you want me to put this stuff on correctly. Move your shades," Rufioh told him as Meenah wandered off somewhere.

Dave lifted them slightly and the bull-horned troll applied paint for him on his cheeks under his eye sockets.

"Just take it off," Rufioh said, as Dave moved the piece of eyewear around to let him work around it.

"No way."

"Come on, it's not that big a deal. Just take them off already. We'll be done faster."

"I said no," Dave protested. The troll made a grab for the shades with paint-coated fingers, but Dave leaned out of the way. "Dude, cut it out! Hands to yourself, jackass!"

"Just take it off!"

"No!"

"Come on!"

"I said no, gog dammit!"  
>"Wow, it sounds like you two are having a completely different conversation from over here," Meenah informed them, returning with a lump of what appeared to be clay and some folded clothing.<p>

"You know what, never mind," Rufioh said, closing the little round make-up container. "It's good enough."

"So, Davecape, your blood is now officially burgundy, like the Megidos," Meenah said, switching the topic.

"Where does that place on the hemo-scale?" he asked, taking the clothes and captchaloguing them then switching them out with his god tier robes. It was a lot faster than getting changed manually.

"The very bottom," she said.

"Well, great. Thanks a lot." He didn't actually care, but he said it anyway.

"Hey, it's the closest to your actual blood color, so if anemoneone touches you it'll explain why you're so warm."

"Great, I'll just go walk around and ask trolls to put their hands all over me, because that's exactly what I was planning on doing."

"Smartassiest alien ever," Meenah remarked.

"Hey, that's exactly what Terezi said," Dave recalled.

"Yeah, I've been meaning to ask, who is this Terezi? Should I know more about her?" Meenah asked.

"She's Latula's dancestor, right?" Rufioh guessed.

"Pyrope," Dave said. "Her last name is Pyrope, if that helps."

"Oh, yeah, I talked to her a few times. She's pretty cool," Meenah said.

"Great, now that we've all established we all know who a currently unimportant troll girl is, can we move this along?" Dave sighed. They were seriously never going to find Karkat at this rate.

"You brought her up," Rufioh pointed out. "But anyway, what's the clay for, Meen?"

"Horns." She broke it into two lumps with her hands and, before Dave could dodge out of the way, she smacked them right onto his head.

"Holy shit, what the fuck?" he demanded, reaching up to knock them off and do damage control on his hair.

"Don't touch!" she whacked his hand away.

"Yeah, Meenah, those, uh, don't really look a whole lot like horns," Rufioh observed.

"No shit, Sherlock, it's fucking clay," Dave pointed out, moving his hand toward his head again, but Meenah pulled his hood over his head.

"It just needs to look like you've got horns under that hood," she explained, "so don't squish 'em."

"Oh my gog," Dave sighed again, readjusting his shades. "I am so fucking done with this planet. Let's find Karkat already so we can get the hell out of here."

"Yeah, I would say it's good to be back, but… not really," Rufioh said. "I'm already getting weird looks."

Meenah, once again, took charge. "All right, let's pick a direction."


End file.
